The Computation Themes

The title, "The Computation" already gives us a clue, because there's no way a Renaissance poet is going to write an entire poem about adding up numbers. This work is addressed to the speaker's lov...

We like the image of clock hands spinning wildly out of control to describe this poem (see "Setting" for more on this). The poem dislodges us from normal earth-time and takes us into the world of t...

What's that? Sorry, we couldn't hear you over the speaker's weeping and sighing. Throughout "The Computation," he goes through stages of grief including disbelief, a retreat into memories, and spir...

"The Computation" becomes progressively more unreal before taking a final swan dive into the supernatural. You don't realize exactly what the poem is about until about halfway through, when the num...